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China, Outlawed Christian Sects
Work Together to Oppose Cult

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Charles Hutzler Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated July 23, 2002 4:49 p.m. ET

BEIJING -- Christian groups long resistant to state control are finding rare common ground with China's government in opposing a fringe sect -- and showing Beijing the advantages of cooperating with, rather than suppressing, more-mainstream groups.

The sect, Eastern Lightning, springs from the margins of charismatic Christianity increasingly found in parts of rural China, and its methods and message are stirring anxiety among both more-traditional Christian groups and the government. The group preaches that Jesus has returned in the form of a woman in central China's Henan province, a hotbed of religious activity. Unlike the more-indiscriminate proselytizing done by many Christian groups, Eastern Lightning mainly targets Protestants and Roman Catholics for recruitment, sometimes using force, scholars and Christians say.

Its latest alleged attempt at forced conversion -- the mid-April kidnapping of 34 members of the China Gospel Fellowship, a popular group preaching a mainstream if passionate Christianity -- spurred a tentative rapprochement between the normally wary underground Gospel Fellowship and the officially atheistic Communist government. Fellowship members traveled to Beijing and won a promise from the Public Security Ministry to investigate the abductions, a church activist says. By late June, all but one of the 34 kidnap victims was free.

The unprecedented cooperation has spurred more. Last month, more than 300 unofficial, or house, churches across Henan lent their approval to government campaigns against religious groups the government brands as cults.

"We endorse government agencies' fight against cults, as long as cults are defined in a responsible manner," the house churches said in a wide-ranging "statement of faith." It singled out two groups by name: Falun Gong, the spiritual movement that the government has struggled to crush, and Eastern Lightning, which the statement calls "the greatest threat" to underground, or house, churches.

Scholars advising the government on religion have seized on this instance of cooperation as proof that more tolerant policies on religion will aid the regime in policing society. "I've told the leadership if religion is treated openly, religious believers will oppose fringe sects more than nonbelievers," one scholar says.

This convergence of interests is a tentative sign that the government and religious groups are trying to move beyond their historic distrust. Beijing recognizes only five religions -- Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism -- and prohibits worship outside state-controlled religious sites and groups. These "official" religious groups can't be directed from outside China; thus, for example, China forbids the Vatican from appointing the hierarchy and directing the activities of Catholics in China.

But the government is increasingly aware that blunt methods of control can't contain the surge in religious belief brought about by free markets and the collapse of Marxist ideology. While most groups ignoring state control in this new spiritual marketplace espouse mainstream beliefs, unorthodox groups with charismatic leaders are also thriving and worrying the government.

Expectations that the government was preparing to embrace the more mainstream but unofficial groups were raised in December when President Jiang Zemin told a high-level conference that religion should be seen as a potentially positive force in society. But in the months since, neither side has given much ground.

Police have continued to arrest and otherwise harass Christians, among China's fastest growing religious groups. A U.S.-based Roman Catholic group reported that a nun and 30 others were detained Friday in Fujian province for holding an unauthorized religious class. At least three provinces have issued regulations to enforce central-government orders: upholding bans on proselytizing and on worship in unapproved venues. In Jiangsu province, anyone caught in such unauthorized worship faces a fine of as much as $2,400; erecting "large" Buddhist images or crucifixes outdoors without permission can bring a fine of $6,000.

One reason for the backpedaling is politics. The Communist Party leadership is too preoccupied engineering a transfer of power to a younger generation of leaders to negotiate a major policy shift on a sensitive issue like religion, scholars and Hong Kong-based Christian activists say. Christians are proving recalcitrant as well, especially in Henan, the heartland of a two-decade-old fundamentalist Christian revival.

That same "statement of faith" endorsing curbs on cults also flatly rejects the government's right to monitor religion. The government-approved church system "is a bird in a cage, and we house churches are the birds outside the cage," says a 46-year-old former factory clerk who helped draft the statement. Even if the government "invites us in, we won't go," he says.

Yet the church groups are also attempting to show a more moderate face. Their statement calls for opening a dialogue with the government and promises to be a stabilizing social force. It reminds the government that lenient treatment for mainstream groups will work in its favor. Noting offhandedly that house churches have extensive underground networks of Bible printing houses and seminaries, the statement says, "Openness will improve the transparency of house church finances and prevent the spread of the extreme and heterodox."

It is just such a murky and marginal environment that produced Eastern Lightning. The group was founded by Zhao Weishan, a key disciple of the charismatic and heavily persecuted sect known as the Shouters, who split with the group in 1989 to set up a rival mission that evolved into Eastern Lightning.

The name is drawn from a verse in the Gospel of St. Matthew: "For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be."

The group's central tenet -- that Jesus has been reborn as a woman in China to render judgment -- carries a frightening reminder for authorities of a 19th-century rebellion started by a man who claimed to be Jesus's younger brother and that nearly toppled the last imperial dynasty. A Communist Party office that deals with religious groups has set up a task force to research Eastern Lightning, a Western diplomat says.

Estimates among Chinese scholars put the number of believers at anywhere from tens of thousands to as many as a million. As far back as 1997, state-controlled Christian organizations were already sounding alarms about unorthodox teachings and violent behavior. Newspapers in Henan have accused Eastern Lightning members of breaking arms and legs, and cutting off ears, of people resisting conversion.

While Mr. Zhao, the founder, fled to the U.S. two years ago, the group still distributes high quality books and CD-ROMs and maintains a Web site -- all evidence of deep financial support, activists say.

China, Outlawed Christian Sects
Work Together to Oppose Cult

BEIJING -- Christian groups long resistant to state control are finding rare common ground with China's government in opposing a fringe sect -- and showing Beijing the advantages of cooperating with, rather than suppressing, more-mainstream groups.